Gretchen Gravely, GSP Adoption 2009 – It is with great sorrow that we have to let everyone at the GSP Rescue know that we lost our beloved Gretchen on January 1, 2016, at the age of 17. We adopted Gretchen as a senior dog (age 9) and have loved every minute she was with us. She was so playful when we first adopted her, loving to go for walks, play in the park and sleep on the couch while we watched television. She was a joy to be around and brought happiness and joy to use every day. As she aged beyond 15 years old, she developed COPD, Cushing’s disease, cancer in her ear and her back left leg. Unfortunately, due to her age she also went almost completely blind due to cataracts and deaf to due to the cancer. Later she suffered from dementia and had several strokes but she still was a fighter, and enjoyed her walks until the end. Our vet was able to provide us medications that allowed her to continue to be active and enjoy her life, but she was never prescribed medication for pain, I believe her Cushing disease, may have allowed us the extra time we had with her. It was interesting that for her COPD that she took prescription meds plus Robitussin and Benadryl and when she became really congested that she loved chicken broth with some cut chicken, it was her favorite and it worked just like it works for us. We were able to spend Christmas with her; however, she was not able to make it through the New Year’s holiday season. We will remember her for the rest of our lives and will always be grateful to the Northern California GSP Rescue for bringing us together. I know many of the people who visit the GSP Rescue site are reluctant to adopt a senior dog, however, we would clearly recommend that anyone who is considering adoption, consider some of the senior ladies and fellas as an option. We were very fortunate to have had Gretchen enter our lives and will forever love her. We are sure we will again adopt more senior GSPs in the future, however, for a while, we are interested in remembering all the love and good time we had with Gretchen. Thank you, everyone, at the Northern California GSP Rescue for all your assistance over the years. I am sure we will be contacting you again in the near future.
-JoAnn & Mike Gravely
